


The Girl Who Waited

by RedVelvetWings



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Blood and Violence, Bookstore Owner Ben Solo, Coffee Shop Meet-Cute, F/M, Finding each other again, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Temporary Character Death, Vampire Bites, Vampire Rey (Star Wars), vampire hunter Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:40:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27199955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedVelvetWings/pseuds/RedVelvetWings
Summary: When Ben gets ripped away from Rey, he makes her a promise to come back for her.Centuries later, when Rey steps into a small café, all she craves is coffee. What she finds is something else entirely.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am back, and I'm bringing to you my Halloween fic.
> 
> Most of it is written as of yet, so expect the next update on Wednesday with the last one coming in on Halloween or the day after. 
> 
> Please mind the tags and enjoy.

“Does this still hurt?” Rey’s fingers glide over the two small puncture wounds at where Ben’s neck meets his shoulder.

“About as much as this.” He takes her fingers in his, lifting them from tracing the two small, faintly red dots to the scar running down the side of his face. “So, not at all.”

Rey wants to cringe. To shy away from the mark she has left. But Ben keeps light pressure on her hand, making her fingers wander along the jagged line, over his cheek and down to his jaw. It’s nothing she wouldn’t be able to break. There is nothing he can do to stop her if Rey puts her mind to it, and she knows that as well as he does, but still, he directs her. Manoeuvres her. Makes her face uncomfortable truths.

“I’m sorry.” The words are low, barely more than a whisper, but Ben catches them anyway.

“Don’t, Rey. It’s fine.”

She draws her hand back against her naked chest this time, even though she can feel Ben wanting to hold on.

“Rey,” he says softly, reaching for her again. Touching her skin ever so slightly. As if she were precious. As if she could break. The callouses rough against her tender exposed skin where he had gripped her. Left his own marks. Temporary as they are.

“No, Benjamin. It’s not fine. It never has.”

She wants to draw back again. Felling guilty. Ashamed. But Ben doesn’t let her. He pulls her close against his chest, trapping her arms between their bodies effectively as his large hands wander along her back, stroking through her hair as the fire licks flames of heat up her skin.

“I never faulted you for it, you know. You were only trying to defend yourself. I was glad I was still alive. Not many can say that after having a run-in with a Palpatine.”

Rey looks up, meeting his amber eyes sprinkled with flecks of gold and greyish-green as they sparkle in the reddish glow of the fire. Soulful, knowing eyes that only look at her. 

She wishes she could say she never intended to hurt him. But she had. She wishes she could say she never intended to kill him. But she had.

Still, he looks at her with love. As if she isn’t one of the monsters, he swore to kill. As if his sword, silver and deathly, isn’t resting within arm’s reach right now. They are both foolish, teetering on a precipice of death every second they spend together. Meant to kill and hate each other. Yet, here they are wrapped up in each other, not in a fight to the death, but in a sweeter, more secretive dance that may end just as deathly as if they had torn into each other from the start. Just as they had those moons ago.

“Ben.” His name falls from her lips. A loving caress. A prayer. A plead.

He doesn’t respond. Just keeps still, looking at her, his fingers and hands wandering over her body.

Rey’s own hands still rest against his broad, naked chest. His skin warm beneath her touch. The blood pumping and rushing through his veins. His heart beating steadily.

He is alive. Human.

And, for whatever unfathomable reason, she loves him, fragile and ageing as he is. Finds the fact that he is so unlike her intriguing and precious. Worth preserving.

Their bond purrs, basking in the knowledge of her love for Ben, established and satisfied from her feeding and their coupling.

Ben’s hand weaves into her long brown tresses. She revels in the touch for a moment before he directs her to look at him. Straight into those eyes that see more than she had ever wanted them to.

He is gentle. Oh, so gentle with her at times, as if his hands weren’t made to kill her kind. As if he doesn’t swing a sword or beats men bloody with them every other moment of every other day. But with her, he can be gentle. Just as she is with him.

“I love you, Reyna,” he says, reverent, his eyes shifting like liquid amber in the mellow orange light as his hand rest over her still heart where the red crystal he had given her hangs between her breasts. “I love you, and I know from a human that’s not much, but I know I will never stop as long as I live. You are my forever.”

She preens with those words – his confession. And for the first time in centuries, there is a smile tugging at the corner of her lips as her eyes take him in. His happiness and honesty. His devotion to her.

Rey doesn’t know how to say them back. The words themselves too often said that they have become inconsequential. But she knows. Knows how deep this bond between them runs, red hot and burning now. Brimming with happiness and love and need. So, she does what they do best. She pulls him close and seals her lips against his in a searing kiss, her hands still resting over his heart, beating a rapid staccato beneath her palm.

Rey wakes with a start, her hand instantly going to her chest, clutching the silver necklace hanging around her neck.

It was just a dream – a memory of days long past. But the hurt that suffuses her whole body is still real all those centuries later.

Maybe she shouldn’t have come back. Maybe returning to Coruscant had been the wrong decision, after all. She should turn back. Find another place in this sprawling world. But everywhere she had ventured, it had felt wrong. All her thoughts pulling her back here, to where it had all begun. Like an invisible string tugging her steadily home.

Home. A word that, too, had lost its meaning for where was home when one lived forever and could never stay long in any given place?

A car horn blares down on the street and is soon after joined by a couple more. The noise of footsteps on pavement drift up to her bedroom as the early risers head to the subway on their way to work.

Down the street, in the little café, she can hear the hissing of coffee being brewed.

Rey throws away her comforter and gets out of bed. She shouldn’t have come back. Coruscant had grown noisy, just as any big city had. Noisy and smelly and bright. There was nothing here for her. The manor was gone. Had been for centuries, in some war or another. All that was left were heartache and memories that haunted her.

On bare feet, Rey patters out of her bedroom. Carpet turns to marble, but she doesn’t even notice. She should already be cold, shivering really, with the late October weather and the heating being off in her apartment, that is if she were human. But as things are, she isn’t.

The glass bottles of white wine rattle in the door as she opens the fridge with a bit too much gusto just to be greeted by wine and blood bags. There isn’t much else in there. Probably a moldy apple and a jar of marmalade pushed to the back from days long past.

The fridge closes with a loud, muffled _thud_.

Rey stares at her fridge, undecided, as something in her yearns. It’s not the typical hunger for blood, but something softer, more mellow. It’s insistent and nagging and utterly annoying, even more so when she finally muddles out what it is her damn body wants.

Coffee. Probably a side effect from hearing it being brewed the moment she wakes up.

Rey groans and ponders whether to get her phone and have it delivered, even though it’s just a few blocks to the lovely café she has been passing every other day. Deciding it’s not worth the bother, she heads back to her bedroom and throws open her closet.

A short while later, Rey steps out of her building and into Coruscant's early morning sunshine. People are bustling by on their way to work, phones already tugged between their shoulder and ear as they manoeuvre through the stream of people, coffee in hand, as the sun slowly creeps in over the tips of the many skyscrapers.

When she sets off down the block towards the café, her own steps are measured and light, with none of the urgency many humans go about their day. Instead, she basks in the golden autumn rays as they touch her bronzed skin.

Autumn was nice, she muses, just like spring. When the sun hangs low, and she didn’t have to hide behind dark sunglasses but could enjoy every ounce of precious sunlight.

She remembers a different autumn day, as colourful leaves fell, and golden light glinted off dark waves. When her hair had still been long, and he had often taken to braiding it, weaving in blooms and leaves, colourful and bright, and she had laughed and loved and kissed him silly for it.

A bell jingles, bright and high, announcing Rey’s arrival as she pushes open the door to the shop, and the scent of coffee and pumpkin spice waft out to greet her. A handful of people sit around various tables or are perched in homey armchairs working on laptops or phones while taking sips from big ceramic mugs.

Rey must have missed the big morning rush as only a couple of other people are standing in line, ready to order. As she surveys the chalkboard menu over the barista’s head, pondering what to order in the hopes to sate her body’s need for caffeine, her eyes begin to wander, and catch sight of a familiar-looking head of dark hair.

He is a person ahead of her in line, and her stomach immediately sinks because her mind had instantly chimed, _Ben._ But she knows it can’t be. He is dead. Has been for hundreds of years. Logically she knows he isn’t here. That she will never get to see him or hold him or kiss him again.

 _And still, you hold out hope that one day he’ll make good on that promise,_ the voice inside her head chides.

_I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise._

Rey has to close her eyes as the words echo in her mind. Ben’s voice as strained and desperate as it had been that day.

“Excuse me. Were you talking to me?”

That voice. Now she is even starting to hear his voice. Maybe she should head back to her apartment. Maybe she’ll call Finn and see if they can’t just get up and leave because this city is seriously messing with her head.

“Miss?”

_Ben._

“Yes, that’s my name.” The voice sounds slightly annoyed now, but something just doesn’t add up.

Rey takes a deep breath, coffee and pumpkin spice, the scent of butter and pastries. And something more immediate, closer, cardamom, patchouli, and leather. _Ben._

Her mind reels, trying to make sense of all the information, as her eyes finally fly open and a deep, long-forgotten hunger rears its head. 

There he stands, tall and broad as she remembers, his dark, beautiful waves framing his face as he looks at her with those same amber eyes, and his unmistakable scent wafts around her.

“Ben.” Rey’s voice breaks, her hands coming up to cover her mouth as she is overcome with emotions.

_He is here. How is he here? He came back. He came back for me. How? Why now?_

There is a heavy lump in her throat, and Rey feels close to crying, something she hasn’t done since she held Ben in her arms, so it’s only fitting that now, it will be him again who makes her shed tears.

“Excuse me, but have we met before.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late upload, life got in the way. As a little consolation though, this fic seems to be wanting to be four chapters, but we'll see.
> 
> Thank you to everyone for commenting, leaving kudos and just coming around to give this a read. I adore all of you.

Rey can only remember crying twice. The first time, centuries ago, had been when the news of her parent’s murder had reached the coven. She had only been a youngling then, wailing uncontrollably as everyone around her stood and watched tears of red running down her cheeks. That day she had vowed to avenge her parents and kill every hunter she could get her hands on.

The second time, she had cried rivers of blood as she had clutched Benjamin to her chest, sitting in a sea of red as he slowly faded away. Her coven had stood idly by again, as she had sobbed, listening to every breathy word, desperate and strained, that had fallen from Ben’s lips.

_I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise._

He had wiped away her bloody tears, smearing his own blood onto her face in the process as he had made that promise, more concerned for her than for his own life. She had tried to turn him in a frenzy, desperate to keep him, to make him stay, as her grandfather droned on in the background.

“Reyna, you do not fall in love with a human. Much less a hunter, child. It is simply not done. Stick to your own kind. And look at him. Helpless. And he’s supposed to be the best the human race can offer. Pathetic. Do you see what I have spared you from?”

When Ben had slipped away, nothing she had tried keeping him by her side, one agonising wail had escaped Rey. She had clutched him close, her grandfather still talking – preaching – before she had laid him down, his dark waves an ominous halo against the backdrop of his own blood, and picked herself up.

That day, tears still running down her cheeks, face smudged with the blood of her soulmate, she had taken up Ben’s silver sword, covered in sticky redness, and plunged it through her grandfather’s heart as the hilt burned her skin.

Her tears had always made her reckless and dangerous; today, on a late October morning in the middle of Coruscant, her tears would make her foolish. 

“Excuse me, but have we met before.” The words are like a bucket full of ice water.

 _He doesn’t remember._ As if the situation hadn’t been complicated enough, just finding him wandering around Coruscant, he also doesn’t remember her. Them. Any of it. But then again, how could he. Hundreds of years after they had lived their first lives together.

She can feel the tears welling up in her eyes and is quick to wipe them away. Nothing more horrifying than crying blood in the middle of a café filled with humans.

“Yes – no – I mean – I don’t know. You look a lot like someone I used to know.” Rey is babbling. She is over 700 years old, and she is babbling because of this man. It’s ridiculous but also not unexpected. 

Ben lifts his eyebrow, but there is the beginning of one of his lopsided smiles tugging at the corner of his mouth, that squeezes Rey’s still heart, because this also, is the same.

“Someone who, by some miracle, also happened to be called Ben?” His eyebrow is still raised in question as his amber eyes study her intently.

“Why, yes. I have you know Ben is a very common name. And anyhow, his full name was Benjamin anyway. For all I know, yours could be Benedict.” The corner of Ben’s mouths lifts in a little half-smile at her babbling.

“Funny then, that my full name is also Benjamin, isn’t it?” It’s not really a surprise. Rey had known. He was her Ben, by some strange twist of the universe he was hers, but different. Different in little things.

“May I get your order?” The young barista looks at them, a typical customer service smile plastered onto his face. Rey hadn’t even noticed them moving along the line together.

“A large black coffee for me, please.” Ben looks over at her expectantly and it takes Rey a second to figure out why.

“Oh – uhm – same.”

Ben nods and hands over his card to the barista.

“You know, I could have very well paid for my own coffee.” Rey is fidgeting now, still caught on the wrong foot in this whole situation.

“I don’t doubt it,” he relents, looking at her over his shoulder as they walk the few steps to pick up their coffees. His eyes take her in, probably assessing her clothes and the designer bag dangling from her arm before they come to rest on where she is still wringing and kneading her hands. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” She looks at him confused, but there is apparent concern on Ben’s face.

“It’s just you flinched just now, and that looks like a nasty burn on your hand.” Rey looks down at where her thumb is pressing into her palm.

Ben is right. Spanning the expanse of her skin is an intricate web of red lines and swirls, reaching up onto her fingers. They are still red as if she had burned herself just this morning and not hundreds of years ago on another Ben’s sword.

“It’s fine, really. Just a little mishap.” Rey shrugs, but when she digs her thumb into the swollen red lines, they still sting.

“Two large black coffees,” another barista calls out and thankfully, Ben drops the topics to hand her the coffee while already taking a sip of his own.

For a fleeting moment, the tips of her fingers brush against his skin, and it's warm and soft, and it makes a current of electricity spark under her skin. It’s like her body is slowly waking up as it travels along her finger up her arm and towards her core. As if this brush of skin to skin contact has awoken something that has long been dormant.

Ben just jerks his head in the direction of the door, as if nothing of significance had just occurred, silently asking her to follow and Rey nods, even as something in her chest tightens.

The bell over the door jingles again as they head outside into the morning sunshine.

For a moment, they just stand together in silence, both taking sips from their coffees and enjoying the mild warmth the golden autumn rays provide.

But Rey can’t help but watch him. Her eyes always finding their way back to his face. To those soft, pink lips she had loved to kiss. They look the same, and Rey is sure if she drew him into a kiss right now there would be no difference. At least in how his lips would feel against her own.

She watches his eyes as they observe the people passing by, amber and flecked with the same spots of grey, light growing darker around his pupil. Those eyes are just as preceptive as they used to be, seeing things she’d rather have hidden, so deep and filled with emotion that she knows this Ben has had is own fair share of troubles, different but harrowing all the same.

He is also clean-shaven now, baby-faced, but handsome when back in the days he was rough around the edges with stubble lining his chin and upper lip. In general, present-day Ben looks more put together, his beautiful hair shorter, his waves artfully styled, when it used to fall past his shoulders. On the hunt he had often worn it up, so it wouldn’t get in the way should somebody attack or should he, and Rey had always enjoyed pulling the tie loose and letting his hair fall around his shoulders so she could run her hands through the long, dark tresses. That, however, was not to say that she didn’t like what she saw now.

All in all, she muses, he looks the same, down to the patterns of his freckles – the three by the corner of his eye she loved to trace where still there – even though there are small changes that have more to do with the current century than anything else.

Her eyes are just travelling along the constellations of freckles, skipping from one to the other down his neck, when she comes across something that makes an unpleasant chill pool in her stomach. Two distinct red dots that she can’t remember. They look like her bite wounds had.

“So, seeing as you know my name,” Ben pauses there, his gaze meeting hers, “I think it would only be fair if you told me yours.”

Rey blinks up at him, momentarily confused, her thoughts still stuck on those two puncture marks at his neck right where she had bitten him in her attempt to safe him – turn him.

“It’s Rey. With an e,” she replies absentmindedly, her eyes still travelling over his face, his neck, every little sliver of skin she could find. To make sure.

“Oh, that’s unusual. Is it short for anything as well?” Ben takes a sip of his coffee, seeming almost amused. Probably by her unadulterated gawking.

She hesitates for a moment before she answers.

“Reyna.”

No one uses her old name anymore. Her full name. The name given to her by her parents. She is just Rey now. Reyna Palpatine died that day with Ben. Now she is just Rey Niima or Rey Johnson. But she wants Ben to know. Wants him to have this little piece of their shared history. Wants him to call her by that name, the way he used to, with so much love in his voice.

When she looks up at him something passes over Ben’s face that she can’t decipher, but it is gone too quickly for her to try and muddle out what is going on behind his preceptive eyes.

“Reyna,” he repeats, and it’s like he is trying out her name, savouring the syllables, mulling over whether he likes the sound and feel of it rolling off his tongue. “Beautiful and quite unusual.”

“It’s a very old name. Not many people use it anymore, and I just go by Rey now.” She shrugs as if its nothing to hear her name in his soft, deep voice. As if she hasn’t longed for centuries for him to say her name again.

He catches her eyes and looks. It feels like, for a second, he sees more than he lets on. Sees their past in her eyes, all those memories of happier times. Rey’s skin tingles under his gaze, his unwavering attention, and she wonders if he had felt the same when she had looked her fill. When she had studied him and catalogued all those small differences.

But he can’t find any differences. He doesn’t remember her hair falling to the small of her back, doesn’t remember how he used to braid it. He can’t tell whether her lips are still the same shade of lush pink or not. He can’t, and yet, he looks as if he could.

A phone starts ringing, but it seems an eternity away. As if it can’t reach their little bubble, but Ben looks away, rummaging for his phone and the spell is broken.

He looks down at the display and curses colourfully – something else he seems to have in common with the Ben from centuries ago – before shoving his phone back into the pocket it came from.

“Sorry I have to go. I’m already late.” He is patting down his jeans, probably in search for keys, switching the coffee from one hand to the other in the process until he seems to find what he had been searching for.

Then he looks over at her again, and there is another small smile playing around his lips. “Have a nice day, Reyna. Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

Before she can even respond, Ben has turned around, and left, disappearing down the street in a mild jog, swallowed by the throng of people crowding the sideways.

Rey stands at the café, her coffee growing cold in her hand, as she watches him leave and something in her chest tightens – wails – with his renewed absence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this story so far, feel free to swing by [ my Twitter](https://twitter.com/braime_driver) and say hi. I post updates there and also mull over wips.


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